


The Things That Were Lost

by dimeliora



Series: Lost Time [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Past Abuse, mention of non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:52:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimeliora/pseuds/dimeliora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A timestamp for "Lost Time". The histories of Ope and Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ope

**Author's Note:**

> This won't make much sense if you haven't read "Lost Time". Also, thanks to my wonderful beta Sammichgirl, and all remaining mistakes are mine.

**Ope**  
  
Two weeks after Ophelia’s seventh birthday the market comes to town. It happened last year, and her dad bought her a marionette and told her that it was hand-carved and that was important. Her parents are very serious about things being hand-carved, or hand-made, or local. They tell her all the time about why it’s important to care about where things come from and who made them. There’s pride in being a craftsman her dad says, and she’s ok with that because it means she got a marionette last year, and she gets to pick her handmade present this year.  
  
It’s not much of a competition, because all day long she’s been circling the same booth as last year with the wizened old woman who brought the marionette. It’s a little boy puppet, a wooden crown cocked sideways on his head and a smile carefully painted on his tiny face. This year they have a princess, and she’ll go perfectly. A matching set. Her dad says she has an unusual eye for symmetry, and that this will pay off when she’s a famous artist. Her mother always responds, “No pressure dear. She may want to be something else.” But she doesn’t. She wants to be an artist, and make the kind of art her dad and mom go to see at the big museums every month.  
  
Which is when she hears the man calling out about artisan crafts, and that’s another thing her parents really like. They’re staring at a little table right now, and she’s allowed to go up to two stalls away. She takes the necessary steps over to the booth and the balding and slightly overweight man behind the counter smiles at her brightly.  
  
“Why hello. And what’s your name?” His smile is oily, a word she just learned can be applied to people, but there are a variety of gorgeous pieces of jewelry in front of him. One is a necklace, a series of circles overlapping each other with a garnet set in the center, and garnets are her birthstone. _It’s perfect_.  
  
“Ophelia. Is that hand-made?” She has to ask, because if it’s from a factory they’ll never even consider it. The puppet is already forgotten in the need for the necklace.  
  
“Yes it is. Hand-made by a very exclusive artisan. Would you like to hold it?” She nods and he carefully lifts it from the velvet cushion and holds it out. “It makes a lovely contrast with your eyes. Like it was made for you. Don’t you think so?”  
  
She does. She thinks it’s absolutely perfect, and that’s all she can think of while her fingers stroke the delicate rings of silver and the garnet in the center. It must be expensive, and she has a limit for presents, but she wants it. Wants it more than she’s ever wanted anything. Her mother’s voice comes from behind her.  
  
“Ophelia? Sweetie what are you looking at?” Her mother leans over and peers at the necklace before making a sound. “Honey that has to be expensive. Maybe you should hand it back to the man.”  
  
He grins and shakes his head easily. “No, no. She can hold it. I was just telling her how perfect it is for her. Don’t you think so?”  
  
Her mother eyes it carefully, and then looks back up at the man. “It’s certainly very gorgeous, but my daughter has a price restriction on her birthday gifts, and we usually only buy from local artists.” Ophelia hears her dad step up and turns big pleading eyes on him.  
  
“Dad? Daddy please? It’s the only thing I want!”  
  
His smile is indulgent and gentle. “Well it’s certainly pretty Ophelia, but I thought you wanted the Rapunzel marionette to go with your prince? It’s a one of a kind, and you might never have another chance to finish the set.”  
  
This isn’t good. Mom and dad are coming together against it, and she can practically _feel_ the necklace telling her how much she needs it. The bald and chubby seller smiles broadly.  
  
“I assure you this necklace is just as rare. It’s quite a find. If price is the issue, I’m sure we can figure something out?”  
  
She pled with them, reasoned, argued, and watched as the conversation between her parents and the portly man degenerated into nothing but excuses.  
  
When pouting failed she resorted to emotional blackmail. The seller seemed to approve, even as guilt flared up at the hurt look in her mother and father’s eyes. “You’d get it for me if you loved me. If you wanted me to be my own person, because dolls are for little girls and you always say I should be who I want not who people expect me to be.”  
  
She sees it hit, feels awful and triumphant, and then they tell her no anyway, and she gives up. Cries all the way to the cotton candy booth and refuses the treat, and then spends the rest of the day sullen and unhappy.  
  
But when they get home, no present this year, she swallows down her tears and tries to be good. To make up for the hurtful things she said. Because her parents always remind her that she’s responsible for the words she uses, and what they do to others. That she’s responsible for her own actions.  
  
  
\----  
  
Three days after her blowup and Ophelia is no longer on restriction for her bad behavior at the market. Instead she’s spent the day at the park with her parents, and the sullen attitude is fully gone in place of enjoying the open space and the swings. She loves to go high, and see the world from a better perspective. No longer is she the little thing that all the old ladies call adorable. Now she’s something large, something powerful, and the feeling of lifting above all the adults and soaring is pleasing and addictive. She wants to go higher, do more, but mom and dad say it’s time to head home for dinner.  
  
They have spaghetti and meatballs, the conversation focuses around faculty members at the college they work at, and Ophelia struggles to keep up as her parents complain about red tape and canon. Whatever _that_ is. She doodles in her sketchbook while they talk; drawing a unicorn and trees even though she can’t quite get the branches to look right. When dinner is over they send her up to bed with kisses, and her mom gives her an extra-long hug.  
  
Years later, when Ophelia is an adult with a rather questionable set of morals and what seems like the weight of the world on her shoulders she’ll remember that moment and wonder if her mother had any inkling of what was to come next. If maybe that was her version of goodbye. It’s unlikely, but the thought will haunt her until she dies.  
  
She does the thorough check of herself that’s required every night, the one she’s been allowed to do alone since she turned seven. She has to make sure there’s no bleeding or bruising, and she’s rigorous about that because once when she fell off the roof she didn’t check right, and that was when she’d broken her leg. Her mom cried for days after she tried to stand up and the limb collapsed underneath her with no warning. When the inspection comes up clear she brushes her teeth, washes her face and hands, and then changes into her pajamas. The house is quiet, one of the many droning documentary voices going downstairs, and she ignores it and slips under the covers. Her dad has already started the lantern spinning, and she watches colorful fantasy shapes made of light crawl along the walls and ceiling.  
  
Ophelia doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she dreams of something lurking outside the house. She can hear it scraping along the brick, and snuffling underneath windows as it tries to find its way in. Listens to it while a little woman with blond hair and a notebook watches her appraisingly from across the room. She wants to ask the woman what she’s doing there, what the thing outside is, or why she’s suddenly so afraid. She’s never been afraid before. Dad says it’s because she’s sick and can’t learn to be afraid of things hurting her. Mom says it’s because she’s got a brave and courageous soul.  
  
Which is when she hears her mother scream, and the blonde woman checks something off in her notebook and then snaps it closed before pushing up her glasses and disappearing. Ophelia realizes she’s awake, and that the screaming hasn’t stopped yet. She slips out of her bed, full of an unnamed dread that has no comparison in her relatively cushy life, and then moves to the doorway. The screaming has stopped, but now she can hear something wet and thick through the crack in her door, a thump and then a noise that makes her think of a knife cutting into steak.  
  
It’s the smell of blood that breaks her paralysis and sends Ophelia’s sock-covered feet down the hallway and to the top of the stairs.  
  
From this vantage point she can see down into the foyer, and there’s her mom lying on the floor at a funny angle on her side. Her dad is kneeling beside her mom, head down and hands pressed against her mom’s stomach, and there’s blood on the floor. Ophelia doesn’t think, doesn’t consider, she rushes down the stairs and when she gets to the base of them her dad turns. There’s blood smeared on his mouth, something dark and thick hanging from his lips, and he lifts both his hands. Clutched in one is a wickedly sharp and red-stained knife. In the other is the necklace she wanted so badly.  
  
Her dad’s eyes, blue like hers, narrow and then widen in horror. He bares blood-stained teeth, apologizes once, and then slices his own throat.  
  
Later she’ll read the police report, but it won’t give her any clear idea on how long she stood there before the officers kicked down the door and forced their way into the crime scene. It won’t tell her how long she stayed there with blood soaking into her green forest patterned socks, or how long she stared into the empty eyes of her dead parents. It will say what the contents of her father’s stomach were and how when she was touched she went ballistic and bit an officer. It will tell her that physical evidence pointed to her mother fighting tooth and nail to preserve her own life, and that both of them were DOA.  
  
At the funeral a stranger, a man with her mother’s brown eyes and square jaw, puts his hand on her shoulder and turns her ever so slightly. The lady that brought her to the funeral says this is her Uncle Jeff, her mother’s brother, and that he’s going to be taking care of her now. There’s a man behind him that looks a little grizzled, a baseball cap clutched in his hands and an awkward look on his face. The man calling himself her uncle introduces him as Bobby.  
  
Ophelia says nothing as the two men lead her away from the side of the gravesite. Her guardian chats about legal issues, the dispersal of items, the college still owning her home. She doesn’t speak until several days later, when they’re in a diner with the things left to her and her uncle packed in the back of his old truck as they head towards what he calls home. Her uncle rattles an envelope the police gave him, opens it, and pours the necklace out onto the table.  
  
The stone gleams dully in the light, the red of it the color of the blood on the floor around her mother, and Ophelia grips her fork tightly before letting out a roar and stabbing the necklace. The whole diner is staring at her in horror, the waitress’ mouth hanging open as Ophelia’s fork slams hard into the necklace over and over until the rings are displaced and the stone cracks under the force of her rage.  
  
She drops the fork, listens to it distantly clatter against the ground, and then looks up at the two men sitting across the booth from her. Her finger shakes when she points, but her voice is steady if a little rusty. “ _That_. That made him do it.”  
  
Honestly Ophelia expects them to treat her the way everyone else has. Delicately, distancing themselves and then whispering about her parents and what her father did when they think she’s not listening. Instead the man named Bobby nods once and adjusts his hat, and her uncle gathers up their things, leaves money on the table, and takes them to a church where the necklace is dropped in the furnace. She imagines she can hear her mother screaming as it melts, and maybe it’s not her imagination because Bobby and her uncle jerk once while it goes on and then a big hand lands on either of her shoulders.  
  
\-----  
  
It’s a miracle it takes as long as it does for Uncle Jeff to witness the full extent of the genetic illness the guardian-ad-litem obviously explained to him. They’re in the woods, Uncle Jeff calmly explaining how to properly hold the rifle, and how to be quiet and still, and the deer is now in front of them. She’s been there a year, and while her uncle and his friends speak regularly Ophelia doesn’t have much to say. Things are different, but that’s ok. She couldn’t stand the idea of everything being the same anyway, as if it never happened. She’s gotten used to the constant guests, to the loud and raucous parties, and how everyone treats her like she’s something different and confusing.  
  
Her uncle goes out of his way to make sure she feels safe and at home. Introduces her to people several times, and then seems unsure if she’s pleased or distressed by their presence. Ophelia never gives him an opinion one way or another. Instead she simply lets them talk around her, nods when she’s addressed, and works on the language books her uncle has given her on top of her official school homework. It’s obvious he knows about her drawing, that someone told him, but she no longer uses the sketchbooks. She doesn’t want to be an artist anymore.  
  
It’s when the shot rings out, and she looks up to see that it’s gone badly and the deer is on the ground with a bullet in its gut and making this noise, this terrible noise, that Ophelia realizes she’s moving. She jerks forward, and breaks out of the blind before she remembers that they’re off the ground. When she hits it’s on her arm and she rolls over and gets up before staggering her way to the injured deer. Her uncle is shouting behind her, but Ophelia keeps moving and reaches the dying animal fairly quickly. The left arm won’t work right, but her right hand finds its way out to the poor thing and strokes its fur. The eyes…the eyes are just the right shade of brown and they look up at her helplessly as the animal thrashes and jerks. It kicks her once, but she barely notices.  
  
Jeff’s there then, and his hand lands heavily on her shoulder. “Hey babygirl. You need to turn away now ok? This isn’t something you need to see.”  
  
Ophelia swallows once, and then holds out her right hand. “Knife.” It’s the first thing she’s requested since the day of the market.  
  
“What? No. No girl you don’t have to do that. I’m going to do that.” He sounds shocked, maybe horrified, and that’s ok. He needs to be. Because after all, what is one more death on her hands?  
  
“Knife.” This time he gives in, and the heavy hilt lands in her hand. It looks so big and clumsy there, and she grips it the way he showed her before stepping forward and slitting the deer’s throat. Then she wraps her good arm around it and hears her Uncle Jeff make a dismayed noise. When she bothers to look she can see the bone sticking out of her left arm, knows now why it wouldn’t work, and ignores it in favor of holding onto the deer dying in her grip.  
  
\-----  
  
When she’s ten Uncle Jeff and Uncle Bobby sit her down and tell her the truth. About the amulet, about the people that keep coming into the house, and why she needs to be careful about the salt lines and everything else. Why it’s so dangerous for her to be here, and why everyone is so very careful around her. It’s nice to have an explanation, and Ophelia doesn’t question whether they’re telling the truth or not, but she does wonder why they waited so long. Instead of pointedly asking though she takes a sip of her soda and considers the weight in both men’s faces.  
  
“When do we find the man who sold us the necklace?” Bobby’s eyes fly up in surprise, but Uncle Jeff looks pleased and expectant.  
  
“We tried babygirl, and I promise if we ever do there’ll be retribution. In the meantime I need you to do something for me. Do you think you can?” She nods without hesitation, because Jeff has given her everything by promising her retribution, by telling her she wasn’t crazy all those years ago, and that _means_ something. “You turn eleven in a few weeks. I want you to ask for something this year. I know why you don’t want to, and I get that, but it’s time to move on Ope. Time to heal. I don’t care if it’s a favor or a thing or what, but you gotta ask for a gift and I’ve gotta get it for you. “  
  
It’s unexpected, but she can deal with it. She agrees tentatively, and when the big day approaches Ophelia finally knows what she wants. “Will Rafi teach me magic so I can help?”  
  
Her uncle stares at her for a long time before he pulls her up into a hug. She suffers the contact for a bit and then pulls back and takes in his smile.  
  
  
\----  
  
Ophelia is sixteen when she gets her G.E.D. Bobby is horrified by her decision, but Jeff seems proud of her need for independence, her need to break away from people that will never understand what they are and what they do. To celebrate he gives her a Jeep, and to top that off he secures a place for her as an apprentice to a tattoo artist he knows. He also gives her a fake ID. The plan forms on its own, and she tells Jeff only half of it. He agrees.  
  
Which is how she finds herself guiltily sinking bolts in a rock wall that is used predominantly by top-rope climbers. The thing is, if this is the last time Ophelia ever climbs a rock wall she’ll be damned if she does it the way beginners and children do.  
  
And as far as Ophelia Burton is concerned, this _is_ the last time she will ever climb a rock wall.  
  
As far as she can tell other than the two hikers she saw walking around the cliff face towards the other side when she first started up she’s got the park to herself. Everything is working out just like she wanted it to, and that’s almost too much to hope for. She dangles for a bit near the top, body twisting in the wind and taking in the way the trees seem sparser here, less lush and alive. The rock is beautiful though, and looking out over the park she knows for a fact that Texas has its own special charm, even if it has nothing on the beauty of Maine.  
  
Which says nothing about the fact that it’s in the nineties here, and she’s sweating her ass off even with the breeze, while back in her hometown it’s just starting to thaw a bit. There’s something to be said for the Southern climate. In small doses. When she finally reaches the top though she pulls her last anchor out to remove the proof that she broke the unspoken rules and then unpacks her bag. There’s sandwiches waiting, and she’s already hungry but she’ll be hungrier in a few seconds.  
  
It’s second nature to pack the bowl, her eyes roaming over the landscape and wondering if she should pull out the binoculars and look for something special. Something to leave in a note for Jeff. If she should leave a note at all.  
  
Because there’s still the question of whether or not she can make this look like an accident, and if she can’t then what exactly is her uncle going to think? She doesn’t want to hurt him, but she just can’t…she can’t do it anymore. It’s not that Jeff isn’t wonderful, or that she doesn’t love Bobby, or Rafi who’s taught her everything about rituals and magic that she knows, or Old Jen who is thirty and the toughest woman she’s ever seen.  
  
It’s not that they don’t love her, or that she’s not happy being their mascot and watching them save the world. It’s the way they respond to her when they’re not thinking about it. The easy way in which they forget that a lack of physical pain response doesn’t mean a lack of emotional pain. At her best she feels like a hollowed out doll, purposeless and wandering in the midst of a world made for better creatures. For things with _feelings_.  
  
There’s an emptiness in her that she can’t stand anymore, and this is the best time to respond to it. Now while Jeff is considering following Jen across the ocean to look for older and more bizarre hunts in the place where so many of these monsters originated. While the world is hanging on some obscure thread and calling for her to move or die. She has nowhere to move to. Hasn’t had any since that night nine years ago when she heard her mother’s death cries.  
  
The bowl is almost cashed when she hears it the first time, and honestly she thinks it’s some odd extension of the time dilation she so often feels when she’s good and stoned. High, shrill, inhuman, and she brushes it off as memory and hallucination. Except it happens again, and then Ope is dumping the burning embers and ashes from the bowl and dropping the pipe before scrambling over to the edge.  
  
Below her, at the bottom of the cliff there’s a guy on the ground half-curled around his own ribs as another man beats him. It’s not a fight, it’s a slaughter, and the guy on the ground isn’t trying to help himself at all. There’s his defensive posture, sure, but he’s not actively trying to get away. A particularly vicious kick to his ribs lifts him from the ground and Ope is moving before she’s even got a fully-formed idea.  
  
The good thing about top-rope climbs, other than being accessible for beginners and safety fanatics, is that there’s a very reliable anchor at the top. The bad thing is it already has a rope in it, and she needs that rope gone without the attacker at the base of the rock face noticing. It’s highly unlikely. She’s bagging her stuff and cutting the rope fast though, eyes following everything and taking in all the factors. The wind isn’t very high, and while the North face she climbed was a 5.11, this side is only rated in the low fours according to her research. Calculations, concerns, all of it runs through her head as she pulls her gloves on, ties her rope to the anchor and loops it through the belay and carabiner set up on her harness, and then pulls out her knife and clips it directly to the harness. She loops the rope around her hands and looks back down once before turning her back to the drop and taking a deep breath.  
  
Time is moving more slowly for her than the rest of the world. The first rule of rappelling is safety, but the second is controlled speed and she’s not really capable of properly assessing how fast she’s really going. _Jeff is going to kill her_. She’ll consider the irony of all of this later, but at the moment air is rushing around her at top speed and she’s looking down between her feet to see the only break she’s caught is that the tall blond she’s about to hit hasn’t looked up.  
  
The force of the impact is probably much worse than she thinks it is. Her ankle twists and there’s pressure and then looseness that she wasn’t prepared for. The guy she hits goes to the ground, and she follows him with a rattling impact before rolling back. Everything Jeff taught her is running through her head at top speed while the world continues to move in slow motion. She pulls the knife not trusting her fingers to move fast enough and slices the rope before he’s up and coming for her.  
  
She rolled out of the way of the first stomp and then pushed up on the leg she knows isn’t bad. She’s halfway there when his knee connects with her torso and she’s breathless. The boy on the ground, and he is a boy maybe her age or younger, looks _destroyed_ , and she has time to take that in and the way the sun is lighting up the hair of the man above her before he strikes out again and misses her face by millimeters. Her response is to swipe out, and the knife slices his hand as he draws it back for the next hit.  
  
He lets out a howl of rage, and she pushes forward with her good leg and slams into him, knife moving at top speed. It’s not about restraining now, all those rules go out the window, because he was going to murder this kid and now she’s a witness. Now she’s the next potential victim. This is fucking _survival_. So instead of trying to subdue or scare him Ope twists the knife downwards and slams it into where she knows his femoral artery is. He lands another blow to her midsection, but she’s used to being breathless by now and he can’t stun her with pain.  
  
There’s a brutal joy to it really, and mixed in with the realization that she’s murdering someone is the knowledge that she’s just saved a life. She twists the knife and then pulls, and the guy staggers backwards with wide and shocked eyes. The knife comes back up and she jabs it into the hand he has reaching for her. When he pulls back he overbalances himself, and she watches his feet scramble against the loose scree before he goes backwards over the rise and tumbles down.  
  
There’s a lot of noise. Everything is noisy from the wheezing of the kid on the ground to the crashing of the attacker falling down the hill. She wipes the knife on her own pants and then flicks it shut before limping her way over to the kid. His face is half destroyed, one eye swollen entirely shut and the other almost all the way there. There’s a swelling in the cheekbone that screams break, his mouth is split in two places, and there’s blood everywhere. He’s squinting at her with the eye that can still see, and she reaches down with one hand and says the only thing she can think of. “Come with me or stay here and die. Your choice stranger.” Did she really just butcher fucking _Terminator_? How stoned is she?  
  
Either way he hesitates for a second, and then he takes her hand and she hauls him up. If he wasn’t a skeleton covered in skin that would be impossible, as would the next part where she loops his arm over her shoulder and the two of them hobble around the cliff face. She sees the path to the top and knows that she made the right decision. By the time she’d hiked down he would have been dead.  She needs to leave him here and take off. Hope that he’s too fucked up to remember much about what she looked like or properly mention her, because she’s got an ounce of pot in the bag in her backseat and her ID won’t hold up to honest scrutiny. She can’t afford a police questioning.  
  
Which is why when he gets in the car and settles into the seat, wheezing and whimpering with one hand cupped over ribs that must be broken; she starts the car up and puts it into drive. She picks a little motel and rents a room with the emergency card Jeff gave her. The whole drive down she stayed with his friends, never short on couches or road houses with Jeff’s allies. He’s no Winchester, but he has a strong reputation in the community, and unlike the infamous John it’s a good one. The plan had been for it to be her long goodbye tour, a last visit with Bobby and the Harvelles, one more time seeing One-Eyed Marcus and laughing about his two eyes but missing index finger. She’s never found out what his nickname is about…  
  
Yup. Very. Fucking. Stoned.  
  
The room is miserable, one King sized bed and terrible wallpaper. She leads the kid into the bathroom and starts up the shower before gesturing for him to strip. She’s half-surprised when he does it without an argument, and then she leads him into the spray. He soaps himself mechanically, fingers fumbling helplessly more than once, and she studies the severity of what she can see. He’s too thin, underfed, and tall. _Very_ tall, and the hands suggest there’s more growth to come. His fingernails are ragged and his hands shake under her scrutiny. The bruising over his torso is bad already, and will probably look worse come tomorrow. Still she doesn’t think there’s any internal bleeding. His jaw moves when she suggests he try to move it, and that lets her know it’s not broken. Other than the cheekbone, his nose, and the splits to his lips it’s all superficial damage.  
  
He doesn’t accept the pipe after she packs the bowl, but he does sit very cautiously on the edge of the bed and gesture to her ankle. She’s got it propped up, and the swelling is even more noticeable than before.  
  
“Y-y-you should g-get that looked a-at.” His stammering seems natural, and his half-open eye stays down and doesn’t make contact.  
  
“I’m fine. Do you need a hospital?”  
  
He shakes his head and turns away from her, hands moving restlessly over the covers and then settling in his lap as they wring each other. “I-I-I’ve had w-worse. A-are you g-gonna t-turn me in?”  
  
“To who?” It takes her a second and then she gets it. “Oh! The cops? Fuck no dude.” She waves the pipe once and then frowns and pulls it back taking a long and deep pull. “No I’m not getting the fucking cops involved. Do you want the cops?”  
  
His head shakes violently and then he groans and covers it. “N-no. Please. No.”  
  
 _Well then_. She cashes the bowl quickly and then digs in her bag to find the smushed peanut butter sandwiches. She offers two of them to the kid and he takes both and slowly eats one, tearing it into pieces before working his way through the bits. “You got a name?”  
  
He swallows one piece, head darting up and then back down. He hasn’t made eye contact with her once. “Sam.”  
  
Her own two sandwiches get devoured quickly, and then cotton-mouth makes itself known and she digs out her water bottle before downing half of it and then offering it to him. He takes it hesitantly, sniffs, and then drinks a good deal.  
  
“My name is Ope. I have a longer version, but it’s fucking awful so let’s stick to Ope. You got a home to go to Sam, or was that fucker it?”  
  
He doesn’t look up when he answers, long wet hair hanging over his swollen face. “Ty-he was i-it.”  
  
“Ok. So the way I see you it have two choices. I can drop you off somewhere and then you can move on from there, or you can come with me. I’m headed back to Maine.”  
  
It’s the first time Sam really looks at her, and she can see from the half-open slot that his eyes are probably the most amazing collection of colors she’s ever seen. Without the swelling and bruising he’s gotta be drop-dead gorgeous, and she wonders what could possibly have led that asshole to beat him. He looks like a puppy-dog, mostly-starved, half-dead, afraid, but hopeful. “W-why would y-you d-d-do that?”  
  
She could be honest. She could tell him that she was planning on dying today, and that something about seeing him on the ground she’d planned on splattering onto changed her mind. That for the first time since she was seven she no longer feels like a broken doll, an inanimate object waiting to be shelved and forgotten. That she suddenly has purpose and direction. All of that would be the truth.  
  
“I could say I do this shit all the time but that’d be a fucking lie. Why don’t we settle for, ‘I’m really fucking stoned’ and see where that takes us?”  
  
To her enormous surprise there is the hint of a smile, something almost like a dimple in one cheek, and then it’s gone.  
  
“Ope.” His voice sounds trusting, hopeful, and she’s overwhelmed with the urge to reach out and hold him. To smother that look of fear he had earlier and promise him safety and comfort. Instead she puts the pipe down and fumbles out her cigarettes.  
  
“Yeah. Me Ope, you Sam. At least one of us probably has some permanent brain damage.”  
  
But it’s ok. The next morning they load themselves into the Jeep and get on the road. She stops at a drive-through doc shop hunters use and Sam gets painkillers while she gets a two hour lecture about irresponsibility.  
  
\-----  
  
Ope is nineteen the first time she sees Sam smile fully. They’ve been together over two years, Jeff easily accepting him in and ignoring all the side-effects. All the fallout of his issues. They’re at the table, and Sam is slaughtering her in a game of Scrabble when it happens. He lays down “Quixotic”, the Q on a triple letter slot, and then stands and throws both fists in the air before whooping in victory.  
  
It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, and for a minute Ophelia is speechless and breathless. Then she scatters the tiles with one hand and shouts at him. “You fucking cheat!”  
  
His laughter is just as pretty.  
  
  
  



	2. Sam

  
**Sam**  
  
Sam is almost seven when he first realizes just how serious it is that he doesn’t have parents. It’s not like he’s missed the little things. The way the other kids seem to already have friends in place when he joins the first grade class, or how they all have nice clothes that fit them just right. Sam can see that every one of the other kids look at him strangely, as if he’s something new or confusing. He lets them.  
  
When reading time comes no one offers to be his partner and read off his book, and at recess no one wants to play with him. All of this is old news to Sam. He expects it, and he doesn’t mind it. He has an active imagination, and he doesn’t need them. He pretends instead that when the day is over he’s going to go home, and there’ll be two parents and a big dog waiting for him. Some days he has an older brother waiting too, and some days he’s going to go home to his _little_ brother. Either way, there’s always a brother there that wants to do something like catch or a board game. Sorry or Monopoly. Sam doesn’t care what game, as long as there is a game, and a sibling waiting to play it.  
  
Except today he’s not out in the yard watching the other kids play and imagining, today he’s in the bathroom. He didn’t feel great yesterday, but this morning when he woke up he knew he needed to stay home. His foster mother pushed him out the door with the two older girls that stay with them, and he waited for the bus as he shook in place. Now he’s in the bathroom, curled around the toilet and losing the toast he had for breakfast.  
  
Mrs. Henderson finds him, and she carries him to the nurse’s office and they exclaim about fever and something else. They can’t give him anything, or do anything until his foster mother arrives. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except they call and call but she never answers. The school day drags past, and it only gets worse. He can’t focus anymore on what they’re saying around him, and the heaving won’t stop. It just won’t stop.  
  
He wakes up in a hospital bed, a needle in his arm and a nurse standing over him and looking disapproving. His side hurts, and when he looks down there’s a bandage there that he didn’t have before. He can hear his case worker arguing in the hallway with his foster mother about neglect, about the necessity of being reachable, and then Sam never sees Mrs. Henderson again. He gets moved to a new foster family, and that means a new school. He works hard to never get sick again, even if they tell him there’s no way to stop appendicitis.  
  
  
  
\------  
  
  
  
By the time Sam turns ten he knows all the buzzwords to make the bored woman that visits him think he’s alright. He knows how to talk about being well-adjusted, to praise his foster parents and siblings, and to show them how well he’s doing at school. It’s rote memorization and Sam is better at that than they will ever know.  
  
He knows what kinds of clothes he needs to wear when they’re too rough, and what he needs to do to hide the fact his ribs always show a little too much, and that his cheekbones are just a bit too sharp. They never ask anything other than the standard questions, and Sam knows all of those too. It’s not hard to play the game, and Sam is an expert at it.  
  
The kids at school give him a hard time, but he doesn’t care. He locks it all down tight, and never lets them see if they get under any of the tiny chinks in his armor. When it’s not the case worker, when it’s just him and any number of strangers that can’t quite get to him Sam doesn’t talk. Instead he reads. Books are a revelation that Sam can’t get over. He can be a knight traveling the countryside, or a respected lawyer, or even the president of the United States.  
  
He’s not Little Orphan Sam anymore. He’s not the weird kid whose clothes don’t fit right, or the strange little boy that everyone seems to love to push or make fun of. When his foster brother starts burning the hairs on his legs Sam drops the right words and gets moved to another house.  
  
He doesn’t mind chores, doesn’t mind cooking or cleaning, but he won’t let them exploit his weaknesses. Won’t let them touch his nightmares or the things the make him want to scream when all he can do is tighten his fists and bite his lip. Sam won’t let them get to him, and he has to work hard to protect himself. No one else will do it for him, and he’s learned that lesson the hard way. If he doesn’t like what’s happening he has to change it, and if he can’t change it he has to find a way to hide from it.  
  
He lives in other countries, ones with rolling hills and dragons. He lives in castles and mansions, and he fights crime and preserves honor. That’s Sam, and the rest of it is inconsequential.  
  
 _Really_.  
  
It doesn’t bother him that other boys his age are starting to notice girls and he has no interest, because if he’s odd in every other way he can be odd in this one too. He has no interest in pulling hair or playing pranks. It’s childish, and Sam is not a child. He knows that better than anything else.  
  
His current foster mother is loud, likes to shout at her husband and the other kids in the house. Sam doesn’t care for her much, but he gets three meals a day and that’s worth putting up with a little volume. Except one night that volume is coupled with fingernails digging into his arm as she drags him through the house and into the kitchen. She points to a broken glass, and asks him if he’s responsible. When he says no she shakes him once, hard, and then points again.  
  
“You’re telling me you didn’t do this? That you ain’t responsible? Well, you better think again, ’cause I know for a fact it was your night to do the damn dishes and it wasn’t broken before. You gotta learn to take responsibility for what you done boy. Ain’t nobody in this world gonna give up their time for something like you, so you gotta own up and clean up your own mistakes. You got me?”  
  
He nods once and then starts to brush the glass up, but she hits his wrist and a piece digs in and cuts the tender flesh of his palm. It hurts, hurt _a lot_ , but Sam doesn’t make a noise. He just looks up at her.  
  
“Your parents didn’t want you, the people before me didn’t want you, and I don’t want you. What’cha gonna do when the state ain’t paying your way no more? What’cha gonna do when you gotta be wanted, ‘cause it ain’t gonna happen Samuel. You ain’t that kind of kid.”  
  
He goes to bed that night with his cut hand curled against his chest and her shrieking voice ringing in his ears. Three weeks later when the social worker comes Sam tells her about the incident in a hollow voice, sheds a few tears, and goes to another foster family. It doesn’t matter. They’ll be just as bad, but at least he doesn’t have to listen to that voice anymore. Doesn’t have to think about it being right.  
  
  
\-----  
  
  
Sam’s fifteen, leaning back in a book shop with a copy of _Contact_ in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. It took up a good deal of his spending cash, but he’s willing to give it up to get the rare moment of peace associated with the act.  
  
It’s been a year of aches and pains, but Sam is finally starting to really shoot up. He’s going to be tall, he knows it, and he wonders idly if his real parents were tall. One or both of them. If they had their growth spurts at the same time, and if they thought one day they’d pass those genetics onto someone else. If they were in love, and if his mother wanted to have tall children that she could look at in the way he sometimes sees his classmates parents look at them.  
  
Sam knows now that while he’s not necessarily asexual, he’s not sure where his tastes lie. Bobby Forte kissed him a week before, and Sam liked it, but Bobby is dating Rachel and he’s happy with that. Sam was just an experiment, which is ok because so was Bobby. Although Sam would never say that to him.  
  
He gets along better now. The mocking is still there, but people keep their hands to themselves for the most part and Sam is happy for it. His current foster home has no physical abuse, but he’s tired of it. He gets up in the morning and moves through the house like a ghost, has the same experience when he gets home. No one talks to him, and Sam lives in perpetual silence. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever experienced, but he still hates it.  
  
Sometimes at night he lies in bed awake and wonders what would happen if he just started talking one night, started telling them his story, and what it’s done to him. What would happen if he spouted off his hopes and dreams, or recited poetry, or just something to break the _constant silence_.  
  
It’s while he’s flipping to the next page that Sam really feels the weight of the gaze for the first time. His eyes travel upwards, over the top of the page, and there _he_ is.  
  
It’s instantly electric, the blue eyes taking in his face, and the lips curving into a small smile. Sam’s never really flirted before, and for half a second he tries to recall the things he’s read about flirting. Eye contact, that’s important, but he can’t do it. Instead he closes the book, picks up his drink, and runs out of the store at top speed. He makes it home with his bag hanging off one shoulder and no one asks where he’s been or how his day was. Not that he was expecting it.  
  
It’s a month before he sees the guy again, and Sam isn’t completely surprised when the man sits down across from him. He’s gotta be over eighteen, but he looks at Sam’s copy of the collected works of Frost for a moment before pointing. “The leaves are all dead on the trees, save those that the oak is keeping.”  
  
He feels the grin threatening to spill out, and he closes the book around his finger and meets the blue eyes dead on. “I have come by the highway home, and lo it is ended.” The guy laughs once, holds out a soft hand that Sam grips tightly, and then leans back in his chair and straightens out the legs of his slacks.  
  
“You’re a big fan I see.”  
  
“So are you. I’m Sam.” The eyes brighten for a second, and then the smile is wider and more generous. For a second Sam can’t get over how bright and straight his teeth are.  
  
“Tyson. It’s a pleasure to meet you Sam. So do your poetry interests end at Frost, or do you have any other favorites?”  
  
And Sam? Sam likes that smile. Likes the question, and the real interest he thinks he sees behind it. He likes to be the center of Tyson’s interests, and he likes to talk to the older guy. They stay in the coffee part of the bookstore for three hours, chatting easily about everything. Sam doesn’t tell him he’s an orphan or that he’s in the system. Doesn’t mention the bullies at school or skipping grades. Instead they discuss books and art, TV, and sports as if they’ve known each other forever.  
  
When he has to leave he collects his things and then looks up in surprise when Tyson slips him a piece of paper with his number. “I’d like to see you again. If it’s alright?”  
  
And yeah. Yeah it’s _more_ than alright, because Sam wants that more than anything. So he nods and smiles, and he clutches the number to this chest the whole way home.  
  
Friday comes and Sam resigns himself to an entire weekend of silence. Of eating leftovers because when dinner is served no one gets him, and he knows instinctively that’s because they’d rather not have to eat with him at the table. Which is ok. Sam’s ok.  
  
Except by the end of the weekend he’s shaking. Can’t stand the oppressive quality of the silence, or how badly it shakes him that sometimes he has to touch his own body to be sure that he’s still solid and real. That he hasn’t become the ghost they are making him. He calls Tyson, and they end up at the same part of the bookshop.  
  
It takes three weeks of conversation for Tyson to talk Sam into leaving with him. By that point Sam thinks he knows everything there is to know about Tyson. Thinks that there can’t possibility be anyone more perfect on the face of the planet.  
  
When he’s with Tyson he feels loved, feels alive, and he’s never had anything like that. Fuck his old foster mother, because here’s someone who wants him. Who will want him when he’s not a warden of the state anymore. Here’s someone that will _take care of his messes_. And Sam knows that, because the night before he accepts Tyson’s offer he makes a mistake.  
  
It starts out small. They’re at the movies, and they’re having a great night. Sam laughs with Tyson at all the appropriate spots, and halfway through an arm slings around his shoulders and he relaxes into it. He’s warm, happy, and he wants to be there forever. Except when he gets up the soda he’s holding slips, just slightly, and he fumbles to catch it. The fumble results in Sam spilling his drink over the guy in the seat in front of them.  
  
This is the point when Tyson should refuse any knowledge of Sam and leave him to it. There aren’t many other people in the theater, and the guy loses his shit all over the place. Starts shouting about what an idiot Sam is and how expensive his shirt is. He reaches out once, a hand connecting with Sam’s shoulder and pushing him so hard the edge of the seat catches the back of his knees and he goes slamming backwards and down into the seat. His head hits the top of the chair awkwardly and there’s a bright wave of pain.  
  
Someone further back in the theater tells them to “ _shut the fuck up_ ”, but Sam’s ready. This is going to be a beat down, and he’ll fight but he’ll lose. Except Tyson is there, standing between them and getting in the guy’s face despite him being bigger and having several friends behind him.  
  
“You got a problem asshole? Let’s take it outside.”  
  
Sam grabs for Tyson’s sleeve, misses the first time, but gets it on the second try. “No wait. Tyson that’s not-“  
  
“It is. No one touches _my_ boy.”  
  
And that? That right there is something Sam never thought he’d hear. He sits perfectly still, shocked, and watches what he’s realizing is his _boyfriend_ go out the side exit with three dudes that should be able to clean his clock. Does it to protect Sam, and that’s not something he’s ready for at all.  
  
He gets up from the chair and stumbles outside, because if Tyson is going to get beaten up Sam should be there to suffer with him. They can at least take one or two down before they’re totally destroyed, and if Sam is there they may leave Tyson alone at least a little.  
  
Except when he gets out all three guys are already on the ground and Tyson’s crouching over the leader with a fist cocked back. He’s growling, and Sam looks at how vicious his usually well put-together man is. How feral and wild he looks like that. “-keep your fucking hands to yourself.”  
  
When Tyson stands, knuckles bloody and only the barest hint of a bruise on his jaw Sam surges forward and presses his lips to Tyson’s. They’ve never kissed before, but it’s just like Sam imagined it would be. Tyson’s cool and soft lips pressing against his before they take over. Sam gives in, goes limp in Tyson’s hold, and lets his mouth be plundered. He doesn’t even mind when fingers grip him a bit too tight. This is worth a little pain.  
  
\----  
  
Sam’s sixteenth birthday is spent locked in a room with a guy a few years younger than him crying and pleading for mercy as Sam flexes the power Ty-Brady has given him. The power he’s just learning to fully control. He has to separate the two in his mind. Has to give space between the man that lured him away and the monster that trains him. If he doesn’t he’ll go crazy. Well, _crazier_.  
  
The man’s face twists in pain, the eyes flashing black briefly, and Sam wonders if maybe this is better or worse than being dead. Except he can’t die, or at the very least he can’t get Brady to let him kill himself. He’s tried though.  
  
It’s been a year. A year of this and Sam can’t remember too clearly what it was like at the beginning. There was something then, something about Tyson Brady that made Sam jump ship to come with him. He thinks maybe it was love, or something like love, but what does a monster know about matters of the heart? Neither he nor Brady are qualified to say anything about love.  
  
Sam does remember, with a hateful clarity, his foster mother telling him how useless and unlovable he was. She’ll never know how right she turned out to be. The black cloud emerges, and Sam twists his fist viciously and cuts the demon off before the young man slumps. His chest isn’t moving, and Sam knows that he’s dead. That Sam killed him. It happens more often than not these days.  
  
Teeth sink into the meat of his shoulder, hard enough to draw blood, and there’s a moan behind him. He used to shiver because of how cool Brady’s skin was, but now he shivers in disgust. He doesn’t remember what it was like to be warm. Nowadays he’s always colder than Brady. Colder than anything. Sam’s given up sitting in the sun, given up hot showers, because nothing seems to return the warmth to his skin.  
  
Instead he holds still while deft fingers flick the button on his pants open and shed him of his clothes quickly and efficiently. There’s no passion, no need, just a hard and fast blast of energy being burned off. Sam doesn’t fight. Brady likes it when he fights. He’s stopped struggling, stopped saying no, and most importantly stopped crying.  
  
It’s rote memorization and Sam is good at that. His days pass in a blur of trying to avoid Brady’s attention as documentaries drone on the TV, of practicing the powers Brady has given him, and most importantly of taking his recommended daily dosage. The rush of power that comes with the coppery taste is the only time Sam feels alive anymore. Something inside of him, something no one was ever able to touch before, has curled up inside his head and died. He’s pretty sure he heard its last screams.  
  
This is why he’s so surprised when they end up in the ranger’s station in the national park, and the little girl twisting in the ropes in front of them and begging for them not to hurt her wakes it up. That thing inside Sam that has been hiding for so long shudders, shakes, and then begins to scream, _not right, not right, don’t do this_.  
  
He tries, tries so hard to ignore it, but there’s a feeling that comes with that strangled little voice. Something like being awake and alive, something _warm_ , and Sam wants it. Suddenly wants it so badly that he can’t make himself move. So instead of reaching out, instead of digging around in her body the way Brady wants him to he turns his head and speaks. “No.”  
  
There’s silence, heavy and oppressive, and then the merest brush of fingertips along his shoulder. He doesn’t shudder, but he wants to. “What?”  
  
“N-no. I said no. Not t-this one.” He doesn’t turn to look. Knows exactly what he’ll see. The same thing he sometimes sees in the mirror, eyes black and face blank and impassive. Violence curled up in the corner of eyes Sam thought looked at him with love.  
  
“Sam I don’t think you understand. It’s not a request. Do it or I have to get nasty.”  
  
He swallows once, thick and heavy, and then shakes his head. “No. I w-won’t.” He can do this. He can die with dignity, and die he will. Brady will never put up with this sort of blatant disrespect.  
  
A hand lands on his elbow, and he’s drawn to the door before his body slams into the wall. “Do we need to have a talk Sam? Do we need to be reminded about what you are, and why you’re here? Please don’t make me do that. You know I love you, you know how bad it hurts me to hurt you.” There’s no affection there. There’s not even a threat. Instead a hand brushes his cheek, and the voice is flat and empty. Sam knows it all too well.  
  
“No.”  
  
So now he’s being led outside, along a trail and through the wilderness, because Brady likes to hurt him best in the open. Where he can have hope that someone will see, will help, and no one ever does. The first time he took Sam in hand to remind him of his place was a public bathroom at a club, and some drunken guy actually laughed when Brady took him crying and screaming against the stall wall.  
  
He sees a shape on the cliff face as they head around it, and realizes it’s someone climbing the rock. A girl as far as Sam can tell, and he hopes she won’t take notice. It would be bad if she got involved, worse if she simply watched it happen. Sam doesn’t have hope left for the humanity around him. Why should they care if a monster hurts another monster?  
  
The walk takes a long time, and Sam at least gets to enjoy the beauty of the surrounding land before he dies. To soak in the sunshine that can’t warm him, the trees that can’t shelter him, and the rocky formations that don’t slow Brady’s purposeful step.  
  
Then they’re on the other side of the cliff, and Sam’s pushed down and hits the rocks hard, feels them tear through the skin of his palms.  
  
“Say it again. Say no to me one more time Sam. I just want to be sure you know you’ve earned your punishment.”  
  
And Sam does. He earns every hit, every kick and bite, and he knows it. So he looks Brady in the eye, blue like he remembers but not the man he fell in love with. Not the Tyson who beat up the bullies at the theater or told him he had the most enchanting laugh. Brady, the demon, and Sam can do this. Sam can die like a man even if he isn’t one.  
  
“No.” He doesn’t stammer, and then the pain begins.  
  
When it stops Sam thinks he’s died, and he hears a struggle, harsh breathing, and then crashing. An odd soundtrack for Hell, but what did Sam expect? Music?  
  
Except then there’s a hand, and he squints with his one working eye into the bright light of the sun and sees a towering shadow above him holding out one hand and blocking the worst of the light. She speaks, and Sam has to wonder if the offer she’s giving him is worth it, is any good at all. Does he want to live? Shouldn’t he just lie here, and let it all end? His brain casts back to that first time he and Brady, Tyson then, spoke. The book in his hand and the poem inside it open in front of him.  _Ah, when to the heart of man, was it ever less than a treason, to go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason, and bow and accept the end._  
  
Then he takes her hand. Lets her pull him up and help him along the rocky ground. Because suddenly Sam _wants_. Wants to get up and move. Wants to live.  
  
  
\-----  
  
Sam is seventeen, right on the cusp of eighteen, when the last of Brady’s blood hits him. He was sure it was all out. The night sweats and the terrors had ended, and it seems so unfair that it’s come back. That it’s here again. Ope and Jeff have been gone for days, and Sam’s been getting increasingly nervous and unsettled until the morning he wakes up and knows, _knows_ , that it’s still in him. That he’s tainting their happy household just by being here.  
  
He can’t. He can’t drag them down with him. He’s just a monster after all, a _thing_ , and so he draws the bath and then stares at himself in the mirror for a long time. If his eyes are really black, or if it’s just the force of memory that makes them look that way Sam will never know. All he does know is his hand strikes out and shatters the mirror almost casually. He takes one long piece, and then sets to the task at hand. Maybe he’s right, and maybe he’s wrong, but either way he’ll know in just a moment.  
  
The glass cuts easily, and there’s red blood and maybe the hint of something else. So he bleeds like a person, and he looks like a person, and maybe those are good things. It’s hard to tell. He settles into the water and watches as it turns pink, as the colors mix and swirl and the room fills with that familiar and almost comforting coppery scent.  
  
He’s honestly half asleep, drifting in and out of reality, when he hears it. It’s not human, not a sound he knows. A wail of animalistic agony, and his eyes shoot open to see Ope in the doorway with her hands over her mouth and her face white. He wants to comfort her, but he’s too sleepy.  
  
Jeff appears over her shoulder, but Ope is already in motion. Her hands plunge into the water, and the whole time that high-pitched scream is coming out of her mouth as her tiny hands slip and slide through the water and his blood to grasp and push at his wound. She reaches up and snatches a towel off the rack so hard it breaks from the plaster of the wall, and then she’s pressing it against the wound as her other hand pulls the drain plug.  
  
Jeff disappears, and the whole time Ope is just screaming. Agony now mixed with fear and rage. There are no words, and the sound breaks off and falters when Sam touches her face as best he can through his doubling vision and tries to smile.  
  
“Sorry Ope.” It’s all he can get out, and the world goes black around him.  
  
When he wakes up he’s in the bed in their house, the one they insist is his. Ope is sitting beside the bed, her arms dyed in flaking red and her head hanging low. Red and black hair covers her face, and her chest moves smoothly without a sound. Sam swallows once, throat dry, and then shifts. That’s when he notices that his arms are bound, and there’s an IV line in his right elbow pumping in blood. How they got it is beyond him, although he knows that Jeff knows a lot of strange people.  
  
“Ope?” Her head comes up, but her blue eyes are wide and unseeing as she stares through him.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Why?” He wants to know, but he’s not sure she’ll tell him. Not sure she even understands what he’s asking until her lips purse and her hands twitch. She fumbles into her pockets and pulls out the cigarette pack before popping one into her mouth and lighting it. Jeff hates when she smokes inside.  
  
“Fuck you.” He expected it, but it still hurts. “Fuck you and fuck your stupid questions. Why? Fucking why Sam? I could ask the same goddamn thing. You crash into my fucking life, and then turn everything fucking upside down, and then this? You were getting better. We both know you were getting better. So, _fuck_ , why?”  
  
“I-“ He falters, unsure, and sees the eagerness in her eyes. The hope that it was a mistake or an accident even though they both know it wasn’t. “I wanted to see if I had organs like a human being. I want-wanted to-I just-I’m a mon-monster Ope.”  
  
Her fingers tremble, and then the cigarette hits the floor and there’s a bright spark of pain in his face while his vision whites and his head snaps sideways. Her hand stays in the air, palm open, and then she falls into the bed sobbing and presses against his uncut side. “Sammy-Sammy please-“  
  
It’s the shaking that gets him. The way her whole body shakes like she’s about to fly apart into tiny pieces. He wants to hold her, but his hands are securely bound, and he can’t move much at all other than to shift closer against her. His cheek throbs and his side hurts, but there’s something shifting inside him as she weeps into his chest. Something coming back to life, and it hurts, but it’s more than welcome.  
  
“Sammy you’re- _Jesus_ man you’re my everything. You’re my goddamn all, and fucking don’t do this to me. Don’t fucking leave me. Don’t fucking take yourself away or put yourself back there, because you fucking escaped. You fucking escaped so please honey, fucking _please_ just stay with me. It’s selfish and fucking shitty, but please don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you. I can’t fucking do this, and you’re supposed to be my fucking friend and you’re like a fucking-please Sammy. _Please_.”  
  
And Sam? He has no words for that. Nothing to say and no way to argue it. Because this is _real_. This isn’t any of that early manipulative bullshit Brady pulled to reel him in. There’s no art here, no smooth language and soothing sweetness. Ope’s raw, hard, and there’s snot and tears soaking through his shirt as she breaks and shatters at the thought of losing _him_. The thought of not having _him_ in her life anymore.  
  
What he did to earn it is irrelevant. Sam can’t care about that, or about how badly she shouldn’t want this with him. How she should want him as far from her as possible. All he can think about is how close he came to destroying her, and what he should have thought of before. He might not matter much to himself, but for whatever reason the lunatic currently pressed up against him can’t function without him. Loves him, and he has to uphold that. Has to be good and safe and well for her, because she doesn’t deserve to break.  
  
“Untie me.” She looks up, eyes wide and frightened, and then somehow reads him and understands. She undoes the knots deftly and then Sam is wrapping the arm without the needle in it around her and pulling her in tight. He’s weak, tired, and he wants to sleep now, but he has to do this first. “I’m sorry Ope. So sorry. I didn’t think. I promise you, I promise I won’t ever do this again. Ok? I _promise_.”  
  
And Sam means it.  
  
\-----  
  
Sam is twenty-six when he finds out his real birthday. When he was a kid they designated it as the day he was found at the hospital. When he changed his last name to Burton Ope gave him one near Christmas, because “he was her best present”. Sam didn’t get to tease her half as much as Jeff did about that one, because it always made him tear up a little. So when he wakes up on May 2nd in a motel room with a very pleased looking Dean holding a Hostess cupcake with a candle in it Sam is honestly more than a little perplexed.  
  
“What-Dean what the hell are you doing?”  
  
Dean’s eyes moved from the cupcake, to Sam, and then back to the cupcake. “Uh. Yeah. I’m-well what does it look like Sam?” The blush spreading over his cheeks makes Sam want to lick him, but he restrains himself and pushes his way up from the bed.  
  
“Being a lunatic at-“ he checked the bedside clock and groaned, “-six a.m. What the hell Dean?”  
  
His brother’s lips pursed, almost a pout, and then shifted into full pout when Sam didn’t immediately retract his statement and start heaping praise on Dean. “I brought you a cake. For your birthday.”  
  
“My birthday isn’t-“ Except it probably is. Because Dean knows his _actual_ birthday. His real birthday.  
  
Sam has a real birthday.  
  
It shouldn’t mean so much, shouldn’t be so much of a revelation, but it is. The sudden understanding that Dean knows things about Sam that Sam doesn’t know. That all that stuff they needed when he was a kid and never had is right here in Dean’s head. Medical history, birthdate, social security number. All the stuff Sam was given as a child born to a family, and then all that was taken from him.  
  
He’s been given everything since those days in Texas ended. A family he can love, a lover that will go to the ends of the earth for him, and a purpose. A chance to be a real hero instead of a monster.  
  
Sam blows out his candle, drops the cake on the bedside table, and then drags Dean into the sheets with him. Because after all, _it’s his birthday_.


End file.
